Stumbling on Wins: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports [Hardcover]

This is disappointing and I don't recommend it, either for sports fans or anyone with an interest in the growing and substantial research on fallibilities in human judgment, decision making and use of information. Its basic point is one that is well established, that conventional measures of performance in professional sports are misleading predictors of future performance; examples are pitchers' ERAs and NBA points per game. It repeats the many-times made observations about how often NFL first round quarterback draft picks are bombs. That's well presented and thoroughly documented but in more detail than the use of the findings warrants. Its main point is that overreliance on the wrong data leads to bad economic decisions by managers who should know better. I don't recall any item in the analysis that has not been covered elsewhere. Examples here are: (1) Field managers and coaches in baseball, football and basketball have little impact on team performance, (2) Statistically, it makes sense to go for it on fourth down, (3) Trading up to get a high draft pick is generally a bad deal, economically and in terms of finding the best talent, (4) NBA draft position is a poor predictor of career performance, (5) The NBA "hot hands" streaks are a myth and (6) Isiah Thomas was a truly, truly lousy general manager of the Knicks. Agreed. Agreed.
The main weakness of the book seems to me that it largely relies on data about individual performance for its core evidence and though it alludes to the context of teams, it is very univariate in its analysis. The authors emphasize this but only in a single footnote. (The regression-based methodology examines only the strength of the linear relationship between two independent variables.) There is no multivariate perspective: the balance of a team's roles within a deliberate defense-offense strategy, career injuries, character burnouts and dysfunctions, owners, franchise history and the many contextual economic factors such as player caps and guaranteed contracts. It's almost all about individual stars only. The selected examples seem casual and arbitrary. In a book that argues that the role of the coach is minimal, for instance, there is no mention of, among others, Bill Belichick, Bill Walsh and Scotty Bowman, as counterexamples or confirmatory ones to be explained through the same methodology of data analysis. None of these are even mentioned once and Isiah Thomas and Alan Inverson are given far too many pages. There is no consideration of what I suspect explains the dynamics of performance, which is the nature of sports teams as a social organization comparable to that of most Fortune 1000 firms and very much driven by short-term career, management and market pressures. Given that the univariate analysis shows that no figure explains more than a fraction of the variance in the linear regression analysis, then there simply must be a multivariate methodology for any conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the decision making process.
Perhaps I am incorrect in my assessment here; I have only limited skills in statistical analysis. The authors have strong resumes and the book thoroughly documents its sources and provides excellent footnotes. It's well presented. But all in all, it seems far too casual in its framing of a complex issue, doesn't add new insights and is overloaded with micro-level data that belabors the case that decision making in pro sports is largely screwed up.

Stumbling on Wins is an important book.

If almost demands the question, "Why wouldn't someone want the team they have invested 1/4 billion dollars in...to win?"

The authors have done a fantastic job of teasing out just what it is that determines what causes professional sports teams to win or to lose.

For example: Everyone knows that coaching matters in professional sports, but how important is that coaches skill to the team? If you took that NBA coach and moved him to another franchise, does the next franchise perform better or worse? Does the incoming coach do better or worse? It turns out that there is a statistically sound model to determine just how much value a professional coach adds to a team. My read on their analysis is that most coaches are important (without one the team would be in disarray) but most professional coaches are pretty similar in their contribution to a team winning. So go ahead and spend tens of millions but it's not going to cause you to win any more games. Are there exceptions? Yes there is one truly notable, exceptional...exception. There is a clear "greatest coach ever," and after that the reported results show that most of the rest do their job...and no one is all that much better or worse than anyone else. Again, my read on their analysis. I'll let you get the book to find out which coach.

What's even more fascinating is the authors discussion of how valuable certain all time all star players were to a teams winning. It turns out that a lot of current Hall of Famers were not as important to their teams that were big winners as many players were to teams that were losers. When Kareem Abdul Jabbar played basketball he was amazing. But there was another player who was able to help HIS team produce more wins than KAJ and yet he is not in the Hall.

Moving to football the analysis is more difficult because there are only 16 games played in a season, not 82 or 162. Basketball, hockey and baseball all lend themselves to more valuable statistical analysis.

But analyzing the football stats has plenty to teach us about who the most important quarterbacks are...even who the most important kickers are. It turns out that field goals do matter...and it turns out when the kicker goes to get his paycheck his kickoffs should matter more than his field goal kicking ability when it comes to his paycheck...and it doesn't.

Just how good is Ben Roethlisberger? You'll find out in the book.

In baseball, Bill James discovered years ago that "batting average" isn't anywhere near as important as On Base Percentage or Slugging Percentage. You never see those numbers reported in the paper or on ESPN. Why? OBP and OSP are a great deal more important in valuing a player.

Taking a walk, is not exciting. But when Ricky Henderson walked 100 times it turns out that was a *lot* more impressive and important to his team than his other accomplishment of 100 stolen bases.

My first inclination is that to watch your team score runs because of bases on balls is nowhere near as exciting as watching stolen bases which is not as dramatic as the home run.

How often have the Chicago Cubs signed the big name only to find out that Home Runs just don't convert to wins and losses. (This wasn't covered in the book...it's my assessment of being a Cubs fan for too many years...)

The fact is that players are getting paid quite well in general but some players are far overpaid IF WINNING MATTERS. And a LOT of players are FAR UNDERPAID if winning matters. But is that what matters?

The data collected in the book is so clear cut that there is no justification in Hockey, for one goalie, say, to get paid much more than another goalie. The best goalie of the current era is heralded as just that. But there are others who are just as good and earning nowhere near the money. Why?

There's no question that players know that scoring more points in basketball comes from taking more shots. Taking more shots demands a more selfish approach to the game and those coaches who allow that to permeate will have teams that win fewer games. Players that are "exciting to watch" don't always make for the best players for a team to have if winning is what matters.

I found the analyses in the book to be insightful and it reignites my personal passion, as a fan who prefers to see his team win than to see the star player hit a home run.

An endless array of notes cite and acknowledge contributors not only in sports but those who have studied what matters. I was pleased to see they mention Brian Burke who does such an excellent job of analyzing sports in general but football in particular.

This book is a must have for the sports enthusiast...and for the guy who goes up to the window and plops his $100 down on the Patriots while in Las Vegas....

Interesting in parts, but this is obviously a blog converted into a book, rather than content so substantive that it was suited to a book. Most of the inefficiencies discussed are relatively common knowledge by now among statistics-savvy fans, although I did think the analysis on how kickers' value comes more from their kickoffs than field goals was interesting and new.